1. Max! Tell us a little bit about yourself! What are your main roles in FSS and Mythos?Hello! My name is Max Schaefer, and I’m the COO and co-founder of Flagship Studios. I’ve been making games for 15 years now, most notably in co-founding Blizzard North and working on the Diablo series. With Flagship Studios, I wear a lot of hats, from making particle systems for Hellgate: London, to serving as Executive Producer for Mythos.

2. How long have you guys working on Mythos? Tell us a little bit about the birth of Mythos? (When, and how you guys came up with the idea.)The Mythos project is about a year and a half old. It began with a desire to hire Travis Baldree, who was the mastermind of the game Fate, which in our opinion best captured the hook of the Diablo games. Travis couldn’t leave Seattle so we had to come up with a creative way to work together. At the same time, we were moving along with Hellgate: London, and were looking for a way to test our network architecture. So we came up with the idea of making a test game that would work in fundamentally the same way, but be simple and easy to create with our existing tools and technology. Almost immediately, we realized we actually had to make this game something more.

3. How many developers are working on Mythos? Is everyone at FSS Seattle?For the first six months, it was just Travis. Now they are up to 9 developers, all in Seattle. Due to the nature of the project, they work together with the network team at Ping0, and with the guys here in San Francisco from time to time.

4. Isn’t it hard to communicate when most developers are away? How do you controlThis question got cut off, but I’ll try to answer. The communication isn’t hard at all, really. We all use instant messenger programs, and are fully networked, so we’re in constant contact. But the main reason is that Travis runs a tight ship, and as a result it’s not exactly a high-maintenance organization.

5. What do you think is the strongest feature of Mythos?The strongest feature of Mythos is simple, concentrated fun. The world of Mythos is comforting. It’s familiar, yet original. The combat is crisp and responsive, the characters are endearing and mischievous, and the quests don’t require that you set aside a whole weekend to complete. Mythos makes people smile.

6. Many people say Mythos reminds them of Diablo. Does it have any connection? How is Mythos similar and different from Diablo?We have about 17 people at Flagship Studios that worked on the Diablo series – more people than Blizzard has. The spirit of Diablo infuses our work, because our spirit infused Diablo. There will always be a connection. But the world of Diablo was a very different one than Mythos. Diablo was darker, more linear, and didn’t quite have the MMO feel that Mythos does.

7. When people compare Mythos with Diablo, do you feel any pressure?Of course we do. We always feel pressure to do everything better than the last time. I think that need began with the competitive atmosphere and commitment to excellence at Blizzard, and lives on today at Flagship Studios.

8. How is the closed beta going on? Is it helpful? Roughly, how many are participating, and what are their responses?There are thousands of people participating in our beta, and their response has been fantastic. We’re getting a lot of help with balance and suggestions, and we’re interacting with them every day. The community is shaping up to be unusually positive and enthusiastic, which we appreciate very much.

9. You didn’t set any time limits in Mythos’s closed beta. Why? Do you know when this test will last?While Mythos has become a real, major project for us, it’s also still serving as a test bed for the network technologies for our upcoming Hellgate: London release. So we’re keeping the project flexible and not committing to anything that might compromise its role in doing that.

10. When will Mythos be open to public? Since its closed beta is ongoing right now, the developing process seems faster than HGLD. Will it be open before HGLD?That is a tricky question. It’s sheer insanity to try to release two major titles at the same time, especially for a startup, independent developer. Nevertheless, that’s pretty much what we’re doing. We’ll continue to scale it up and bring it to the public as our capacity to do so grows. Mythos is one step ahead of Hellgate: London because it’s serving to prove the technologies that then get implemented in Hellgate. It’s unclear right now if we’ll open up fully to the public before the release of Hellgate: London, but we’re sure going to try. If not, it will be shortly afterwards, and in the interim, we’ll be scaling up the testing all the time.

11. How is Mythos different from HGLD?In some ways it’s similar, especially structurally, but they look and feel like completely different games. Hellgate: London is a more serious, deep game. It’s futuristic, played from the first-person or close third person perspective, as opposed to the isometric, fixed-camera view of Mythos. However, there are many interface conventions and mechanics that are shared, so if you can play one, learning the other should come easily.

12. What are the similarities? (HGLD and Mythos)Since we share a graphics engine, development tools, and network technology, plus design sensibilities, there are many similarities. If you look at screenshots, they look like completely unrelated games. But if you play a while, you can see the common blood between them pretty easily.

13. Anything you would like to say to gamers in china?Yes. One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel to all the places in the world our games are played. One of my new favorite places in the world is China, and we feel privileged and honored to be able to bring our games to Chinese gamers, and to be a part of the exciting and awe-inspiring growth and development of the game industry in China. Our last trip brought us to Shanghai and Beijing, and we can’t wait to see much more in our next visit! Ni hao, China!

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HanbitSoft Inc. is one of the largest online game publishers in Korea as well as in Asia. HanbitSoft has continuously invested in developing and publishing excellent and promising online games. HanbitSoft has broad portfolio of online games ranging from casual games to high-end MMORPG’s, either developed in-house or by external development studios such as Joy Impact(MMORPG AIKA) IMC Games (Granado Espada), MMORPG Mythos, etc. HanbitSoft games have reached out to more than 40 countries including Europe and Brazil and it is focusing on pioneering overseas online game markets in an effort to be a “global leading publisher.” The company’s holding company, T3 Entertainment, is a well known online game development company for online dance game ‘Audition’, which has over 500million subscribers around the world. The company is also developing various titles such as Audition2, Fantasy FPS ‘War Cry’, Action RPG ‘Camon Hero’ and etc.